Nancy and I drove to Princeton, NJ, yesterday, and poked our heads into the spectacular Princeton Public Library. They have all sorts of ways of making money including a cafe within the building and sale of used books temptingly displayed at the entrance.

When I talked to my mom this morning I told her Nancy and I ate at the same restaurant - Mediterra - as when we had our Family Reunion there a few years ago.

RIP OFF RIP OFF!

For $18, we had a Greek salad the size of the palm of your hand.

We left hungry. But found another restaurant where we split an order of Sweet potato fries.

One of Nancy's jobs is selling products at a health food store in Princeton, so she never gets to see the city and all its cute shops and restaurants.

Then it was off to Impact Thrift in Hatboro to complete my spring wardrobe.

Goal: Shorts.

When I walked in, I asked the lady behind the counter: "Do you have any sales today for old people?"

"It was yesterday," she said.

I like wild riots of color. Everything is in the washing machine now. I don't wanna smell like other people.

Brewed myself another cup of decaf. It's in my favorite cup - on top - a gift from Sue Abernethy many years ago when we lived in the apartments. Husband Lloyd is a college prof.

The things we remember about people!

Sent out postcards - 34 cent stamps please! - to the following: SLD, Freda, Bill Hess, Mom n Ellen, Ingrid, Ada, Lillian Moss, John Patrick, and will send out more the morrow.

Man, this coffee is delicious. Even on a hot day I like drinking hot coffee. Watch! They'll find health benefits in this.

Mom went to Judi Adler's dentist who essentially told her the same thing as Schneider. She probly needs root canal as she's got a bump on the roof of her mouf. For pain she takes Advil and is also taking ampcillin, I believe, Dr Saul Miller.

She's in good hands and will spend the rest of the day in bed.

I'm working on a poem about Garbage Night. Got outa bed last nite with lo blood sugar - 48 - gobbled up

dipped in peanut butter

I'd been reading

and said to myself, "Porous Vision." In other words, it seemed as if there were holes in the pages, so I reluctantly got out of bed and went downstairs to eat.

Then I went into my Writing Room - the coolest room on the second floor - and wrote a surprisingly good first draft of my poem, to be presented on Saturday.

Vickey Justus (what's in a name!) was kind enough to email me photos of correspondence from my late father - Harold J Greenwold, dead at 59 of a brain tumor that meta'd from his lungs - which now resides in the Historical Room at London, OH, Correctional Institution.

Wait till my mom sees this! My dad was an amazing man, one of the first in Cleveland to hire blacks for his distribution warehouse of Majestic Specialties, Inc. Beryl Pinckney, Page Sumpter, Jr, and Sam Jones when he moved to the NY office.

Click to enlarge photos.

Don't you luv these wooden file cabinets?

I told Vickey that many people with bipolar d/o end up in correctional facilities. We have a new member in our group. "Joe" is a retired Upper Moreland cop.

He sent me an email and said my name sounds familiar, he hopes he didn't arrest me.

I said, "No, Lt Robinson did," for my first mania. They drove me in the back of a cop car - with grates in the backseat and doors that couldn't open (like serial killer Ted Bundy) - for the worst experience of my life - locked up for 3 days at MCES, my only hospitalization.

Many of our members have gone to correctional facilities in Bucks and Montgomery counties. Why? Being psychotic and arguing with police officers - entering other people's homes - shoplifting (this was our wonderful "Sophia," a nurse, who finally got her license back)

My great poem "Why I Like Flowers" was just rejected from Poetic Diversity. For your reading pleasure, here it is:

WHY I LIKE FLOWERS

In a small room with
white walls
I sat bare-bottomed
sandaled feet removed from
the stirrups
and she told me my uterus
has grown smaller with age
‘shrunk’ was the word she used
invisible behind the summer shorts
I would put on

Sometimes they remove it when it gets old
like a tree taken down
Stay with me, I say,
Who else has been so patient
so steadfast
made just for me
swelling just so
when the babies bulged inside
the perfect incubator
so, it bled a drop of blood
or two
a protest, I suppose, a cry,
a tear of sorrow
for what once was.

Driving home with a Beethoven
Quartet making the spring air
even more beautiful
I wonder why people like flowers.
Are we a kind of flower?
To cup a flower in your hand
is to see a world without
perfidy, malignancy, cruelty
we see ourselves as once we were
the innocence and yearning
of the newborn.

2 comments:

Always chock full of good tidbits to read and digest..your blog, that is.

Hope your mom gets her dental issue taken care of soon and recovers quickly. I was hoping there was an end to dental problems when we age. I am sick of them.

Funny about not wanting to smell like others. When my eldest was a toddler and we got hand-me-downs from my nephew, David, without being told from where they came, J would say, "Smulls like David", though I could never detect any odor at all.

Love the poem and its perspective, and interesting about your fther's correspondence and where it ended up. I am not clear on with whom he was corresponding.